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Sunday, October 14, 2018

Planning for The End

Have you thought about your obituary?

Have you done the most basic things to help your loved ones if something should happen to you?

Have you communicated your wishes to loved ones for your funeral?

Do you have a will? A power of attorney document? A named guardian for your minor children, if any?

If you have a special needs child, have you made provisions for his or her future? (I have a brother in law who is developmentally disabled, and I could write a book about this.)

I don't want to sound like a law office ad or a life insurance commercial, and, no worries, I am not going to try to sell you anything. Nor am I going to be morbid. I just want to pass along some things I have learned along the way of a multi year journey.

No, I'm not an attorney, a paralegal, or an insurance agent. I'm just someone who has enrolled in Experience University and hasn't taken the final exam yet.

As some of my readers know, my husband and I have been caregivers to his 90 year old mother in law, who , in the past year, has gone from an independent living facility to skilled nursing. In the process, we have learned a lot about what we need to do to make sure our adult son has fewer difficulties than we have had.

We've been so consumed in caring for her that we've realized that:
-we don't have a place to be buried or interred;
-we've never told our son where our will, our powers of attorney, or our health care proxies are;
-we have never told him our wishes for our funerals. This is especially of importance because we come from totally different religious traditions, and they have little in common as far as funeral customs.
-we have never communicated our health care wishes - do we want certain measures taken in the hospital to prolong our lives?

Do you really want to have someone else make those decisions without knowing your wishes? Do you want some control over these things? Maybe you don't. But if you do, you need to do it, and someone needs to know your wishes.

And, have you made sure there is money to pay for it all?

We are all so busy living our lives, we don't give much thought to our final months, weeks, days.

I'm not going to give you any advice along these lines. I'm not a qualified professional. And, as you can see, I've not done the greatest job with this myself.

I'm just going to ask that you give it some thought, and contact professionals that can help you with the process.

It's all part of aging with grace - a final gift we can give our loved ones, so that they don't have to work as hard as our family has had to do.

Everything I own is held in a trust. My sons are all aware of it. I have given them instructions for my remembrance service, if any, but I do need to put it in writing. I've also worked on an obituary. Something short and sweet. Some of the ones in the paper lately are like a short story.

It's one of those things that you don't think about until you're dealing with it yourself. Did you know you can designate someone to take over your Facebook page once you pass? Upon your death, they can turn it into a rememberance-type page, and they can manage it. (Discovered this via a woman who was dealing with it after her brother's death.)

Actually my hubby and I just made a new will and we have a power of attorney. We haven'haven'ade funeral arrangements but recently went to a dear friend's funeral and that made me think that we need to take care of that.

This is an excellent subject and awareness is so important. Working in a law firm, we have seen some really sad cases. You may not think you need a Will, but really, if you own anything, a car, a house, have a little money in the bank, have a Will. There is nothing uglier nor sadder than siblings fighting over their parents possessions.

Good advice. When my husband passed away we didn't have anything in place. The only thing we talked about was not keeping either one of us on life support. We didn't have a will, POA - nothing. So after he passed I did a lot of guessing. He died suddenly and young. We knew we needed something, but never got to doing it.

Recently, my fiancé passed away. We had everything in place! No guessing this time. It made a world of difference... especially the POA and the will.

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2018 A to Z Challenge Survivor

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About Me

From the housing projects of New York City to rural Arkansas to upstate New York, I've traveled a long and winding road. Learning more daily about writing, photography, and the importance of chocolate in a well-lived life.